When audiences come to see one of our
performances, they will see a fully
polished professional orchestra and the
most gorgeous of Lowell House chandeliers
flanked by the one of the most
professional sets that Boston has to
offer. What they will not see is the
intense behind-the-scene work that is
done predominantly and foremost by the
students of Harvard College.
Lowell House Opera is New England's
longest-running opera company and it
produces a fully staged opera once a
year in the wonderful setting of Lowell
House's beautiful dining hall.
If you're putting on an opera with a regular opera
company, you sort of know who your
singers are going to be, you definitely
know who your orchestra is going to be. In this,
we're almost reinventing every year.
We hold auditions for the singers, we
have no idea who's going to show up;
volunteers from the community, from the
student body, we have several faculty
members playing in the orchestra, and so,
you know, there's a lot of behind-the-
scenes work just to physically rehearse
this extremely difficult music.
Before the show every night, we have to take out
all of the tables and chairs from the
dining hall because everyone has been
eating dinner here, so we politely
ask everyone if they could leave and
if they're still eating, we have a room
that they can go to, and we take all the
tables and chairs out, set up all the
space for the orchestra and the audience,
and then after the show is over and the
audience has left, we take everything back
in and set it back up again so people can
eat breakfast in the morning.
This is Celeste, wonderful Celeste, her character is
kind of this very mystical purple and
silver nymph. Right now we're going in
and I'm just creating this exaggerated
and fantastical look that looks great
when you're pretty far away from the
stage. So my main role has been publicity;
posters, invitations to literally the
entire school, all of the Facebook stuff,
magazines, sending out press releases, and
then I've also been doing some prop
stuff so I made this little thesis
binder for the composer and I've
been running around to find other
various things; there's some blue
lipstick back there, an inhaler, all
sorts of random things
that I've had to acquire. So basically the actors
are professionals, but then there's us
kind of running everything else.
What's incredible about this opera is that it's
such an intersection of some of the
most amazing artists in Boston and some
of the best talent in the performing
arts here at Harvard College, all of whom
do it for no money and all of whom do it
purely out of a labor of love. And that
intersection, I think, is really at the
core of the learning experience for the
students who get to see all limits,
because they're so involved in the
creative and logistical aspects that go
into making this professional opera.
And so really seeing where you are as a
student and where you might see yourself
in the future, it gives A. a vision for us
to think, what could I do in this field?
But also say, how can I improve myself
in it and get better at contributing
to this field as best as I can. I'm hoping that
what we can advocate for as people leave
Harvard is some of them will become
phenomenal musicians, some of them will
become amazing singers and have huge
careers, but many people will hopefully
leave with a love of the art form of
opera in a day when we see too many
opera houses closing down and too much
opera being aimed at an elite audience,
and what we're trying to say is that
opera is something that is extremely
accessible and I think that's part of a
broad-based education.